The company would compete against Google, PayPal, Square and others

Apple is making internal and external moves to expand its ability to handle mobile payments, stepping more deeply into a market where rivals would include eBay's PayPal, Google and niche specialists like Square and Stripe, according to The Wall Street Journal.

Internally, Apple created a new position for an executive to be in charge of a project to build a new payment system, and picked Jennifer Bailey for the job, according to the article, where she's described as "a longtime executive" in charge of Apple's online stores.

Apple is seeking to build upon the hundreds of million of credit cards stored on iTunes and App Store, and upon the vast user base of iPhones and iPads. The company already lets people to pay for some products in Apple retail stores by scanning the item and paying with a credit card on file on iTunes, the Journal reported.

Apple didn't immediately respond to a request for comment about the Journal's article.